Trust in the Police: Argentina and Mexico in Comparative Perspective

This research examines the relationship between the evaluation of police performance and citizen trust in the police. Using data from similar victimization surveys for the city of Buenos Aires and for Mexico City we test several logistic regression models. We find that the perception of police performance emerges as the most relevant factor in accounting for variation in levels of trust in both cases. These results imply that, even in contexts of high criminality and low institutional trust, the police can do a lot to earn the trust of citizens and engage them in a virtuous cycle, whereby citizens provide information useful to crime prevention thus increasing trust in the police.